This biography is the current book that the Facebook reading group Read All the Landmarks is reading. I finished this book just as I was listening to an interview with a well-known celebrity pastor who lost his job, platform, family and reputation because of gross sin on his part. The two stories, that of Alexander and that of the pastor, reminded me of one another. In the interview, someone quoted someone (vague enough?) to the effect that “sometimes our talents and charisma put us in places that our character is not developed enough to handle.” Alexander certainly had the talent and the attractiveness and even the courage to conquer the known world, but he couldn’t handle the temptations and the sheer magnitude of the power he attained.

Actually most of us find ourselves in places of responsibility or leadership that we are just not equipped to handle. Had Alexander been wise enough and humble enough to rely on the God who makes Himself known through all creation, or had he even listened more to his old teacher, Aristotle, he might have avoided his final years of debauchery and disappointment and even his untimely death at the age of thirty-two. (He also would have done well to have laid off the liquor. If John Gunther were a temperance promoter, he could not have written a better cautionary tale about the evils of alcohol than this biography of Alexander the Great who turned into Alexander the Mad Drunkard.)

Because I was interested in gaining an alternative view of Alexander’s life and career, I pulled down another book from shelves, History of Alexander the Great by Jacob Abbot. Part of Abbott’s Makers of History series, this biography was published in 1849, about 100 years before Gunther’s Landmark history (1953). In the preface to Abbott’s book, he says the series was meant for young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five who wish to be educated about the great events and people of history. The Landmark history books are written for a younger audience, middle grades or ages ten to fifteen, although they can be enjoyed by those of us who are much older than that. I wondered, “How would a nineteenth century biographer see Alexander’s life in contrast to a children’s writer of the twentieth century?”

Abbott begins by saying: “The secret of Alexander’s success was his character. He possessed a certain combination of mental and personal attractions, which in every age gives to those who exhibit it a mysterious and almost unbounded ascendancy over all with their influence.” Gunther would agree that Alexander started out well and possessed a great many gifts and a certain charisma, but Gunther emphasizes that even as a young man, Alexander’s strengths were balanced by his weaknesses: “Like most creative people, he was full of contrasts. He was affectionate, generous and loyal. . . He never spared himself, he liked to do services for others, and he loved his friends. But—this is the other side—he had no control of his temper and, in later life, often went into crazy fits of debauchery. Worst of all he showed great cruelty on many occasions.”

Things I learned about Alexander, from both Abbott and Gunther:

Alexander loved Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. He had a copy of Homer’s epics, given to him by his teacher Aristotle, that he carried with him on all his campaigns. For most of those twelve years of battle and conquest, he kept his copy of Homer in a jeweled casket that he took form the Persians as part of the spoils of war.

When Alexander was only eighteen, he and his father, Phillip of Macedon, had a fight at a feast, and Alexander made fun of Phillip and called him a “drunk who cannot get across the floor without tumbling down”. Phillip was indeed drunk at the time, and Alexander was an insolent son. Father and son reconciled just before Phillip was assassinated by a man called Pausanias.

Alexander became more and more power-mad and dissolute and cruel and alcoholic as he conquered more and more territory. After he died at the age of thirty-two, his “empire” fell apart. It took a great deal of time for the various parts of his territory to recover from the disaster that was Alexander sweeping through the land.

Abbott ends his book with these words: “Alexander earned well the name and reputation of THE GREAT. He was truly great in all those powers and capacities that can elevate one man above his fellows. We cannot help applauding the extraordinary energy of his genius, though we condemn the selfish and cruel ends to which his life was devoted. He was simply a robber, but yet a robber on so vast a scale, that mankind, in contemplating his career, have generally lost sight of the wickedness of his crimes in their admiration of the enormous magnitude of the scale on which they were perpetrated.”

“Simply a robber” is not the legacy I would want to leave, no matter how “great” a robber i might be.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?